El Uso de Determinativos Semánticos en La Escritura Náhuatl

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol.
61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48

issn 0071-1675
ARTÍCULO
The Use of Semantic Determinatives

in Nahuatl Writing
El uso de determinativos semánticos

en la escritura náhuatl
Rogelio VALENCIA RIVERA

Investigador independiente, España
rogelio.valencia.rivera@gmail.com
Abstract
This article systematically presents arguments in favor of the existence of semantic deter-
minatives in Nahuatl writing, something that has already been proposed by several research-
ers, including Joseph Marius Alexis Aubin when he made his original outline of how this
writing system worked. Semantic determinatives were used as a mechanism to allow easy
discrimination of items on a list, which was necessary due to the variable reading order of
the Nahuatl script. After a description of how this scriptural element was used by other
writing systems of the world, including the Maya, evidence of its use in the Nahuatl script is
presented. Finally, a comparison is made between determinatives and noun classifiers, used
in several languages in the world, to conclude that although several linguists see classifiers
and determinatives as equivalent elements for semantic denotation, they are actually differ-
ent since one works on the linguistic level and the other on the scriptural level.
Keywords: Semantic determinatives, noun classifiers, pictorial lexicalization, Nahuatl writ-
ing system, Maya writing system
Resumen
Este artículo presenta de forma sistemática argumentos a favor de la existencia de determinati-
vos semánticos en la escritura náhuatl, algo que ya había sido propuesto por varios investiga-
dores, incluido el propio Joseph Marius Alexis Aubin al realizar su descripción de cómo funcio-
naba este sistema de escritura. Los determinativos semánticos fueron empleados como un
mecanismo que permitía la fácil discriminación de elementos conformados en listas, herramien-
ta necesaria debido al orden de lectura variable que posee el sistema de escritura náhuatl. Después
de realizar una descripción de la forma en que este elemento escritural fue empleado por otros
sistemas de escritura del mundo, incluido el maya, se presenta la evidencia de su uso en la es-
critura náhuatl. Finalmente, se realiza una comparación de los determinativos con los clasifi-
cadores de sustantivos empleados en varias lenguas del mundo para concluir que, aunque varios
lingüistas ven a los clasificadores y a los determinativos como elementos equivalentes de deno-
tación semántica, éstos son en realidad diferentes, ya que uno funciona a nivel lingüístico y el
otro a nivel escriturario.
Recepción: 12 de mayo de 2020 | Aceptación: 23 de noviembre de 2020

© 2021 unam. Esta obra es de acceso abierto y se distribuye bajo la licencia Creative
Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0 Internacional
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.es
14 ROGELIO VALENCIA RIVERA
Palabras clave: Determinativos semánticos, clasificadores de sustantivos, lexicalización pictóri-

ca, sistema náhuatl de escritura, sistema maya de escritura
Acknowledgments
A draft version of this paper was presented at the VII Congreso Internacional de Códices at
the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and I would like to thank its organizers, Juan José
Batalla Rosado, José Luis de Rojas, and Miguel Ángel Ruz, for the opportunity to have done
so. I would also like to thank Margarita Cossich Vielman, Albert Davletshin, Davide Domen-
ici, Michel Oudijk, Erik Velásquez García, and Gordon Whittaker for their comments and
interesting suggestions on an early draft of this paper (see Velásquez García 2019, 69).
Introduction
As the latest research on the Nahuatl1 writing system has demonstrated

(Lacadena García-Gallo 2008a, 2008b; Whittaker 2009, 2018a; Zender
2008), the inner workings of this writing system were first established in
1849 by Marius Alexis Aubin (Aubin 1885),2 who clearly showed it to be a
logosyllabic script (Lacadena García-Gallo 2008a, 8; Whittaker 2009, 59;
2018a; Zender 2008, 28; Velásquez García 2019, 61). This writing system,
whose reading order seems to be variable or emblematic, also uses other
typical scriptural resources associated with writing systems in general, such
as rebus, phonetic complementation, and the use of redundant logograms
(Aubin 1885, 25; Cossich Vielman 2014; Lacadena García-Gallo 2018; Whit-
taker 2018a; Velásquez García 2019, 72–78). One of the few scriptural mech-
anisms that has not been analyzed in detail, in relation to this writing system,
1
Regarding the names of the many indigenous languages mentioned in this paper, I will
adhere to the same principles stated by Kettunen and Helmke (2010, 10–12) regarding the
orthography of these terms, with one exception, for the language used by the Aztec groups
in Mesoamerica, I will continue to use the word Nahuatl (náhuatl in Spanish) due to the large
volume of research done using this name.
2
Recent research (Rodríguez Zárate 2017, 97, note 206) has pointed out that another
scholar was working on the mechanisms of Nahuatl hieroglyphic writing around the same
time as Aubin. As indicated by Alfredo Chavero in his introduction to the Historia antigua y
de la conquista (Ramírez 2001, 22, note 1), José Fernando Ramírez was making great ad-
vances in the study of this writing system: “Y no solamente nos mostró de esta manera el ver-
dadero camino para escribir la historia, sino que siendo su mejor fuente los jeroglíficos, se dedicó
con empeño a encontrar las reglas para leerlos. El señor Ramírez hizo copiar en tarjetas más de
dos mil figuras con su significado, y de su comparación encontró el modo de leerlas, habiendo
conseguido así fijar las primeras reglas de la lectura jeroglífica. No tuvo tiempo el señor Ramírez
para escribir lo mucho que sabía: sin duda que preparaba estudios importantes, como se ve por los
apuntes que dejó, aunque muchos de ellos no pueden entenderse” (Chavero 1884–89, LVIII–LX).
Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

SEMANTIC DETERMINATIVES IN NAHUATL WRITING 15
is the presence of so-called “semantic determinatives,” defined as graphic

elements used by various writing systems of the world to disambiguate the
readings of some logograms or groups of writing signs with ambiguous or
homonymous readings. They have been widely used by various ancient
writing systems of the world, such as Hieroglyphic Luwian (Payne 2018),
Egyptian (Cervelló Autuori 2016, 334; Davies 1987, 34; Goldwasser 2002, 1;
Polis and Rosmorduc 2015, 162), Sumerian, Acadian (Michalowski 1996,
33; Rude 1986, 135; Selz, Grinevald and Goldwasser 2017, 281) or Chinese
(Coulmas 2003, 55; Boltz 2011, 65), in order to provide additional infor-
mation about the possible reading value of a set of signs, by indicating the
semantic field associated with them. Within Mesoamerican writing systems
it has been complicated to determine if this writing resource was employed,
because Maya writing did not make extensive use of this mechanism of
differentiation, notwithstanding having several logograms that possessed
more than one reading value. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate
that the Nahuatl writing system made extensive use of this writing mech-
anism, at least in certain particular contexts.
One important characteristic of semantic determinatives is that they
do not possess a reading value (Lacadena García-Gallo et al. 2010, 3;
Velásquez García 2019, 70) and do not have a phonetic equivalent (Cervelló
Autuori 2016, 334), although in some writing systems the same signs used
as semantic determinatives may also appear as logograms in other contexts,
where they do possess a reading value. These signs are usually located
adjacent to the signs with a phonetic value they need to disambiguate; and
they do so by indicating the semantic category to which they belong, using
mainly the iconicity of their image (Cervelló Autuori 2016, 334), or by
convention of sign usage, when iconicity has been lost.
Even though the use of a capital letter to mark substantives in German,
personal names in Spanish, or specific nouns in English is not an example
of a semantic determinative, but a Capitonym—a word that changes its
meaning, and sometimes its pronunciation, when the first letter is capital-
ized3—it might help us to understand the usefulness of a semantic aid while
reading a text. There has been some research about the effect of the use of
this semantic mechanism in the field of Cognitive Psychology, where it has
been demonstrated that the use of capital letters at the beginning of certain
3
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/capitonym.

nouns maximizes the “foveal4 preview benefit” (Rayner and Schotter 2014)
of the reading process, which is defined as the minimum time required
to maximize the capacity to discern the meaning of the word immediate-
ly to the right (parafoveal word) of the word where the gaze has been
fixated (foveal word) while reading (Yang et al. 2012, 1032). In order to
measure this capacity, an imaginary border between the foveal and the
parafoveal words is defined; when the foveal preview benefit is maximum,
the time required for the gaze to change its fixation point between the fo-
veal and the parafoveal words is minimum (Yang et al. 2012, 1032). This
means that the use of any semantic aid is a useful tool for the reader to
understand a written text more quickly (Rayner and Schotter 2014; Pauly
and Nottbusch 2020, 6).
Some writing systems use only the context where the words are em-
ployed in order to discern the semantics associated with them, but many
ancient writing systems made extensive use of semantic determinatives, and
I will try to demonstrate that the Nahuatl writing system was among them.
To justify this idea, examples from Egyptian, Sumerian, and Chinese writing
systems will be shown, to then discuss the Mesoamerican case, especially
the presence of semantic determinatives in the Maya writing system. Final-
ly, I will present evidence of their presence in the Nahuatl system, along
with a discussion of how determinatives relate to noun classifiers.
Use of Semantic Determinatives in Egyptian Writing
The Egyptian writing system is possibly the one that made the most exten-
sive use of this semantic mechanism (Cervelló Autuori 2016, 334; Gold-
wasser 2002, 1; Polis and Rosmorduc 2015, 162). Champollion (1836) was
the first to notice the presence of these scriptural elements, which he
named signes tropiques ou symboliques, in the sign classification he presen-
ted in his book Grammaire égyptienne. He clearly differentiated these scrip-
tural elements from the two other phonetic groups of signs, which he called
figuratifs ou mimiques, and phonétiques, which correspond to logograms and
phonograms. This is what he specified in his book:
4
Fovea, a small depression in the center of the macula that contains only cones and
constitutes the area of maximum visual acuity and color discrimination (https://www.mer-
riam-webster.com/dictionary/fovea).

Figure 1. Some examples of semantic determinatives.

Drawing by Rogelio Valencia Rivera based on Davies 1987, 34
68. Puisque la plus grande portion de tout texte hiéroglyphique consiste en signes
phonétiques, l’écriture sacrée fut en liaison directe avec la langue parlée, car la
plupart des signes de l’écriture représentaient les sons de la langue orale. 69. La même
liaison, mais moins directe, exista également entre la langue parlée et les caractères
figuratifs ou mimiques, parce que chacun d’eux répondait à un mot de la langue,
signe oral de l’objet dont le caractère présentait l’image ; le mot devait donc habi-
tuellement servir de prononciation au caractère image. 70. Il en fut de même quant
aux caractères tropiques ou symboliques : on attacha, pour ainsi dire, à chacun de
ces signes un mot de la langue parlée, exprimant par le son précisément la même
idée que le caractère rappelait, soit par synecdoque, soit par métonymie, ou au
moyen d’une métaphore (Champollion 1836, 48).
Figure 1 presents some examples of signs employed as semantic deter-

minatives in Egyptian texts. One of the cases where semantic determina-
tives could be of real use is to identify proper names, in order to indicate
what or who is being named. In the same book, Champollion (1836, 109)
makes a more specific statement regarding these elements symboliques, as
they relate to personal names. He states that names are formed by adding
two parts, the first one is phonetic, and the second one is a determinative
(his own word) that indicates the class to which the name specified by the
phonetic part belongs:
111. Les noms propres véritablement égyptiens, c’est-à-dire tirés du fond même
de la langue, étaient tous significatifs ; aussi se composaient-ils de deux parties bien
distinctes : 1° Des signes ou groupes, soit phonétiques, soit symboliques ou même

figuratifs, qui constituent le nom lui-même ; 2° D’un caractère déterminatif du

genre auquel appartient l’espèce de l’individu désigné par le nom propre. (Cham-
pollion 1836, 109; bold type added by the author).
In figure 2, two examples of personal names are shown, a male name,

and a female name, where gender is indicated by the last semantic deter-
minative, both shown inside a dotted box. In figure 2.A, we have the expres-
sion, sξ-n-h-t-TREE-MAN, sinh[ue]t, a name that means “son of the sycamore,”
which explains the use of another semantic determinative to indicate the
presence of a tree in the name. In figure 2.B, the text indicates a female
name, mr-r-t-FEEL-WOMAN, m[e]r[e]t, “the loved one.” In this case, just before
de semantic determinative for WOMAN-, we find another one for -FEEL-,
associated to the actions related to feelings, and in this case to the name.
The last example in figure 2.C includes the expression s-s-m-t-MAMMAL, s[e]
sm[e]t, “horse,” which includes the semantic determinative for mammals
at the end (Goldwasser and Grinevald 2012, 17).
In ancient Egyptian writing, semantic determinatives were signs that
appeared next to logograms or phonograms to provide some hint about
their meaning, or about its form in a certain context (Polis and Rosmorduc
2015, 165). Determinatives were derived from logograms (Davies 1987,
33), and were used to define the semantics of the word, as well as its
lexical boundaries, as they commonly signaled the end of a word (Davies
1987, 33; Goldwasser and Grinevald 2012, 17–18), and could be combined
to narrow down the meaning intended by the writer, as was shown on
figures 2.A and 2.B. When combined, they follow a strict meronymic5
taxonomical order (Goldwasser and Grinevald 2012, 33), going from the
particular to the general. Even though these signs were used consistently
throughout the life of the Egyptian script, they were not strictly necessary
to be able to read the texts, as they were sometimes omitted, and some words
never used them (Goldwasser and Grinevald 2012, 18). Semantic determi-
natives were basically used as classifiers (Goldwasser and Grinevald 2012,
18), and in this sense they let us gaze into the way Egyptians conceived their
world. They were also used to emphasize a certain characteristic or prop-
erty which the writer of the text considered important for the reader to
5
A meronymic hierarchy is a hierarchy in which the relationship between lexical items is
one of meronymy. Meronymy is defined as a relation holding between two lexical words when
one denotes a part of the denotatum of the other, such as “leg” and “foot,” hold a meronymic
relationship, where “foot” is a meronym, and “leg” is a holonym (Brown and Miller 2013, 283).

Figure 2. Examples of the use of semantic determinatives in ancient

Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. The semantic determinatives are indicated
inside the dashed line rectangles, in the first two examples there are two
semantic determinatives. Drawing by Rogelio Valencia Rivera based on
Goldwasser and Grinevald 2012, 17
know, such as the material something was made out of (Davies 1987, 35),
the social status of a person, the gender; marking someone as a king, a pris-
oner, a priest, a widower, or simply as common people (see figures 2.A
and 2.B). This implied that the determinatives assigned to a word could
vary depending on what the creator of the text wanted to emphasize,
showing the writing system included a lot of semantic information that

went beyond the simple phonetic use of the script (Davies 1987, 35),
and which provided a certain discourse-pragmatic6 purpose to their use
(Goldwasser and Grinevald 2012, 22). When naming somebody in ancient
Egyptian, the writer could choose to define the person as a common person
or as an enemy for example, and in this sense, Egyptians considered this
information to be a fundamental part of their writing system.
Use of Semantic Determinatives in Sumerian Writing
Another ancient writing system that employed semantic determinatives

was Sumerian, a system that was first used in the Mesopotamian city of
Uruk from the period comprised between 3200 to 3000 BC (Michalowski
1996, 33; Rude 1986, 135), being perhaps the first writing system created
by humanity, although it is uncertain if it was developed before or after the
Egyptian writing system (Michalowski 1996, 33). The system was used
originally to write the Sumerian language and was later adapted to write
other Semitic languages used in Mesopotamia and Syria by 2500 BC. The
system used logograms to represent words and phonetic complementation
was present since its early stages of development. It also made use of some
special signs as semantic determinatives that could be preposed or postpo-
sed to the word they were classifying (Michalowski 1996, 35). Unlike the
Egyptian case, semantic determinatives were only applied to nouns (Rude
1986, 135) to disambiguate signs with multiple possible readings.
To show how the system employed the semantic determinatives, we
consider the signs presented in figure 3. The second part of each of the two
words shown in this figure is the same and could be read as apin, “plough,”
or as engar, “ploughman.” In order to know which of the readings is appro-
priate, a semantic determinative is preposed to the word. In figure 3.A, the
semantic determinative giš,7 “tree, wood,” is employed to indicate the ma-
terial the plough is made of. In figure 3.B, the semantic determinative
lú, “man,” is used to indicate that the word should be related to a person.
6
A very interesting discourse-pragmatic use of semantic determinatives is cited in
Goldwasser and Grinevald (2012, 22), the verb rx, “to know,” when used to mean “knowing
a woman in the biblical sense,” may use a phallus classifier.
7
The value giš, for this semantic determinative, or the value lú for the following ex-
ample, are obviously related to their semantic charge in their original language, not as a
reading value, as these signs do not have it.

Figure 3. Examples of the use of semantic determinatives in ancient

Sumerian cuneiform writing. Drawing by Rogelio Valencia Rivera
based on Rude 1986, 136
Essentially, both systems operate in the same way (Selz, Grinevald and
Goldwasser 2017, 281), but the semantics of the Sumerian system fall in the
lexical field, while in the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system the iconic-
ity of the signs plays a very important role in the categorization process.
Use of Semantic Determinatives in Chinese Writing
Semantic determinatives are a very important part of the Chinese writing

system. The Chinese script is formed by two types of characters, those com-
posed of simple graphic elements, called unit characters, that could not be
analyzed beyond basic strokes, and those formed by the composition of two
or more unit characters, called compound characters (Boltz 2011, 57). To
form a compound character, a unit character is taken as its primary element,
then another character is added to differentiate all the possible words for-
med using the same primary element, which created a series of related terms.
The secondary element is usually a semantic determinative that helps to tie
the sound of the word to a specific meaning, which helps the reader to
disambiguate homophonous words (Boltz 2011, 63). This compound

character could be also joined with another semantic determinative to

create a new compound character, in a recursive manner. Even though the
system could use infinite cycles of semantic determinative incorporation,
very few words include more than four or five, suggesting that practical
considerations and common sense were imposed on the system (Boltz
2011, 65). This implies that semantic determinatives are an important
structural part of this writing system.
Noun Classification Systems and Semantic Determinatives
I have previously indicated that semantic determinatives operate as classi-

fiers, but I do not think they are equivalent, and I would try to illustrate
why. Rude (1986) was the first researcher to notice the similarities between
semantic determinatives and noun classifiers, which are a wide range of
characterization devices, used in some languages of the world (Aikhenvald
2000, 1). Classifiers are independent elements whose function is to place
objects in classes that relate to how humans interact with the world (Den-
ny 1976). These categorization mechanisms employed by languages serve
to create cognitive associations among the different elements that the lan-
guage could describe, based mainly on prototypical categories (Craig 1986,
1). In language, the realization of the association between concepts and
categories is expressed through a concrete articulation of linguistic formats,
such as words or other more complex linguistic elements (Pommerening
and Bisang 2017, 3). In the case of noun classifiers, they are always included
as separate lexemes, being their main purpose the inclusion of a noun or
verb into a certain category8 or its numeral quantification, through the use
of a special group of classifiers named as numerical classifiers that specify
some characteristics of the object being counted or quantified (Dixon 1986,
105). We can see classifiers at work in the following example from Jakaltek,
a Maya language (the classifiers are indicated in bold type):
Xil ix malin
naj pel b’oj no’ cheh
saw [woman] Malin [man] Pel with [animal] horse
“Malin saw Pel with a horse” (taken from Goldwasser and Grinevald 2012, 19)
8
Some possible categories could be the size of the object, the material it is made of, if
the object is animate or inanimate, if it is a person, and many more.

Since Rude noted this similarity, many other researchers have equat-
ed the use of semantic determinatives in writing systems to the use of noun
or verb classifiers in language, making them equivalent (Goldwasser 2002,
2006; Goldwasser and Grinevald 2012; Lincke and Kammerzell 2012; Rude
1986; Selz, Grinevald and Goldwasser 2017). But there is a very important
difference between the two systems. While they serve basically the same
purpose—the assignment of a noun or verb to a specific category—they
do not work in the same way. Classifiers need to be uttered, and more
often than not, their inclusion in the phrase is compulsory, therefore they
need to be present, and they are pronounced. On the other hand, semantic
determinatives are not a part of speech, they are not pronounced, and
their inclusion is optional. Although classifiers and semantic determina-
tives basically serve the same purpose, they tend not to be present at the
same time, because when a language uses one, it does not need the other.
While this does not mean that they are mutually exclusive, it may make a
language that exhibits a vast use of classifiers not use semantic determina-
tives when written, and those languages whose writing systems employ
semantic determinatives, might do so because the language does not use
classifiers. Obviously, a language, and its writing system may be perfect-
ly understandable without any of these categorization mechanisms. This
might explain why the presence of semantic determinatives is almost
non-existent in the Maya writing system, since the languages represented
using this script9 do have classifiers, especially numerical ones (Wich-
mann 2011), making the presence of semantic determinatives residual in
this system.
Use of Semantic Determinatives in Maya Writing
The presence of semantic determinatives in the Maya writing system has

been a controversial issue. This writing system shows two characteristics
that might call for its presence: polyvalence, which implies the existence
of multiple readings for a single sign, and homophony, meaning that a group
9
At least four languages are represented using the Maya hieroglyphic writing system
during the Classic period (ca. A.D. 250–900), Classic period Ch’olti’, Classic period Yukatek,
Classic period Western Ch’olan, and Classic period Tzeltal (Lacadena García-Gallo and Wich-
mann 2002, 2005). There is a possible fifth language registered using this script according
to Beliaev (2005).

of different signs have the same reading (Lacadena García-Gallo et al. 2010,
4). After an intense debate about their existence (Hopkins 1994; Kelley
1976, 150; Lacadena García-Gallo 2010; Mora-Marin 2008; Schele 1983;
Zender 1999), the only elements in the Maya writing system that could be
considered as semantic determinatives are the fire sign that is used along
with other signs to identify objects or actions related to fire (figure 4), which
was not uttered (Kelley 1976, 150), and the use of the colors red and black
to indicate the way numbers are employed in calendar almanacs in the Maya
codices (Lacadena García-Gallo et al. 2010, 3).
Another sign once strongly considered to be a possible candidate for a
semantic determinative is the frame used to indicate tzolk’in10 dates. This
idea has been discarded, mainly because this sign presents phonetic com-
plementation in some inscriptions, implying that it was actually read11
(Lacadena García-Gallo 2010, 1026; Zender 1999, 43). There is also some
debate regarding the use of some combinations of signs that some research-
ers (Mora-Marin 2008, 206) claim could signal the presence of semantic
determinatives, because in some cases the addition of one of these signs to
another sign changes the reading value of the latter, but it does so by using
the semantic relationship between both signs, and their relative location
in the glyphic composition, not its phonetic value (figure 5).
In this case, none of the logograms, nor their combination behave as a
semantic determinative, but as stereotyped elements whose semantic val-
ues are combined and lost in order to create a new element with a different
semantic value. This phenomenon is also present in Egyptian hieroglyphic
writing and is called “pictorial lexicalization,” where the pictorially fused
hieroglyphs are prototypical and no longer sensitive to contextual or prag-
matic considerations (Goldwasser and Grinevald 2012, 38). Stuart (1995,
39) called these combinations “representative logograms,” a definition that
properly signals their function as a mechanism to create new logograms,
and not as semantic determinatives.
One possible explanation for the poor representation of semantic
determinatives in Maya writing could be the fact that some of the Maya
10
The tzolk’in was a basic count of days that was used during the Classic period by the
Maya as part of their calendar. It was also used during the Postclassic and Colonial periods
and is still used by some communities in the Guatemala Highlands, such as the Ixil and the
K’iche’, where it is employed in divinatory contexts (Lacadena García-Gallo et al. 2010, 23).
11
This sign is sometimes followed by the syllable –ni, to indicate a reading value of k’in,
“day,” for the frame.

Figure 4. The fire sign employed as a semantic determinative.

Drawing by Rogelio Valencia Rivera based on Lacadena et al. 2010, 3
Figure 5. Examples of “representative logograms” or “pictorial lexicalizations.”

a) TI’, “mouth” (K1440); b) HA’, “water” (Capstone 5, Dzibilnocac, photograph by
Rogelio Valencia); c) UK, “drink” (PC.M.LC.p2.147 DO); d) TI’, “mouth” (Stela I,
Copan, drawing by Rogelio Valencia based on a drawing by Linda Schele); e) WAJ,
“maize bread” (Capstone 5, Dzibilnocac, photograph by Rogelio Valencia); f) WE’,
“eat” (Stela 35, Yaxchilán, drawing by Rogelio Valencia based on a drawing by Ian
Graham); g) WINIK, “man” (PC.M.LC.p2.70); h) KOJ, “cougar” (Stela 8, Piedra
Negras, drawing by Rogelio Valencia based on a drawing by Ian Graham); i) Vampire
(Stela 5, Tikal, drawing by Rogelio Valencia based on Jones & Satterthwaite 1982,
figs. 6–7) (taken from Salazar and Valencia 2017, 87)

languages using this script were some of the few that employed noun and
numerical classification, and these classifiers were actually written using
Maya hieroglyphs. In figure 6, an example of how the noun classifier for
female gender, ix, works in a phrase, is shown.
In this example, the text talks about a baldachin and its corresponding
palanquin (Baliaev and Davletshin 2014), which belonged to the lady
whose titles and name follow the indication of these objects. Her name
is preceded by the classifier IX, “woman,” represented by the image of a
female head in profile (Zender 2014, 5–6), which acts as a noun classi-
fier, indicating that the proper name following it belongs to a woman. As
a noun classifier it had to be uttered. This logogram did also represent
the word IXIK, “woman, lady,” that acted as a substantive, and when used
like this, it was phonetically complemented to indicate so. We can find
some examples of this phonetic complementation in some inscriptions
from Yaxchilán—a site located in the Usumacinta basin—where the term
is written IXIK-ki, and also at Piedras Negras—another Maya site located
in the same region—where we can find a complete phonetic substitution,
i-xi-ki, ixik, indicating that the form of the logogram, when used as a
substantive, was IXIK. When used as a noun classifier, the logogram is
not optional, as could be seen in the hieroglyphs following the specifica-
tion of the object possessed by the main character of the inscription,
whose name is K’abel. Her name is indicated as “ix K’abel,” and immedi-
ately following her name we find the text “Ix ajaw,” where ajaw12 refers
to a title of nobility, similar to lord, or governor. Both ix classifiers are
necessary to qualify the name and the title; both need the specification
that they are being applied to a woman. The same happens again with the
last title Uxte’tuun Ix kalo’mte’, “the lady kalo’mte’ of Uxte’tuun,” where
“Uxte’tuun” is one of the ancient names of the place where the inscription
is located, Calakmul, and kalo’mte’ is a title equivalent to emperor, but as
it is being applied to a woman, it translates as empress instead, and again
the classifier ix cannot be elided.
The vast majority of the rest of the classifiers that appear in Classic
Maya texts have a quantifying nature and are thus called numerical clas-
sifiers. Here are some examples: b’ix, for counts that include multiples of
five and seven; pis, for counts of years (in Yukatek); te’, to count units
The logogram AJAW, “lord,” is represented in this case using the head of a vulture
12
wearing a headdress.

Figure 6. Part of a text from Stela 55, from the archaeological site
of Calakmul, dated in the Calendar Round date 9.15.0.0.0 4 ajaw 13 ya’xsijo’m,
August 22, 731. In red are indicated the logograms for IX, ix, “lady”.
Drawing by Rogelio Valencia Rivera
of time; tz’ahk, to indicate things that are put in order; tal, to indicate things
that are put in order too; tikil, to count human beings; and lat, to count days
elapsed (Lacadena García-Gallo et al. 2010, 47). As I have already indi-
cated, these two classification systems complement each other, and the
poor presence of semantic determinatives in the Maya writing system may
be due to the presence of classifiers that covered basically the same function
but were required to be uttered by the speakers. It is important to note that
classifiers are a part of speech, while semantic determinatives are a part of
the writing system, and each has its own internal working mechanics, even
if their goal might be the same, to provide some semantic background to
the information presented on each medium.
Use of Semantic Determinatives in Nahuatl Writing
Nahuatl was another Mesoamerican language that employed classifiers to

some extent. According to Wichmann (2011), the following are the classi-
fiers originally employed in the Nahuatl language:

Suffix Used for

–Ø animates, types of wood, fruit-trees, chili, paper, mats,
boards, tortillas, ropes, cords, thread, hides, canoes,
boats, ships, skies, knives, candles and similar things
–tetl, “stone” chicken, eggs, cacao, fruit of cactus, maize bread (ta-
male), bread, cherries, cups, butts, fruits, beans,
squashes, melons, books, round and cylindrical things
–pantli, “flag” lines, rows, walls, lines of people or other things or-
dered in lines
–ipilli paper, mats, tortillas, pieces of cloth, skins
–tlamantli talks, sermons, walls, shoes or sandals, paper, dishes,
shields, troughs, heavens, when one thing is folded
on top of another or when something is diverse or
different from another
–olotl, “corn cob” corn cobs, some flowers called yeluxuchil, columns of
stones, bananas, certain bread of seeds like buns,
which they call tzoualli, and others like cañutos that
they call tlaxcalmimilli
But at the time of contact with the Spaniards, there had been a decline
in the use of classifiers, and only –tetl and –tlamantli13 still appeared in texts
(Lockhart 2001, 185; Wichmann 2011). These classifiers only had a quantify-
ing use, and there are no examples of classifiers used to qualify seman-
tically nouns or verbs. So, there is some room for the possible appearance
of semantic determinatives in the Nahuatl script. The presence of this writ-
ing artifact has already been proposed by some researchers, starting with
Aubin who signaled the presence of a “generic sign” for ville et village,
“city and town”, in his study of the mechanics of Nahuatl writing (Aubin
1885, 14). Some other authors have described this scriptural mechanism,
13
In Siméon’s Nahuatl dictionary we find the following entries: “Tetl. En numeración tetl
se usa como prefijo en la formación de los adj. n. que sirven para contar los objetos redondos,
gruesos: centetl ayotli, ‘una calabaza’, nauhtetl tomatl, ‘cuatro tomates’, etc.” (Simeón 1992 [1885],
520). “Tlamantli. S. Cosa. Esta palabra se une a los adj. n. ce, ome, etc. para contar objetos tanto
diversos como parecidos: ontlamantli cactli, ‘dos zapatos’, etlamantli tlatlatolli, ‘tres discursos’,
etc.” (Simeón 1992 [1885], 610). See also Davletshin and Lacadena García-Gallo (2019, 304).

either directly, by mentioning its presence in the script (Manrique Casta-

ñeda 1989, 166–67; Prem 2008, 20, 22; Whittaker 2009, 2018a, 180–81;
Zender 2013, 2017; Cossich Vielman 2014, 117; Davletshin 2017), or indi-
rectly, by mentioning the semantical character of some hieroglyphs used
in the Nahuatl writing system (Williams 1984, 104–05; Offner 1984, 129–
34; Williams and Harvey 1997, 21–23; Williams and Hicks 2011, 25–26).
Following Aubin’s suggestion, Manrique Castañeda (1989, 166–67), Prem
(2008, 20, 22), Whittaker (2009; 2018a, 180–81), Cossich Vielman (2014,
117) and Davletshin (2017), all indicate that the mountain sign denotes
the presence of a city, although signaling its problematic nature, as some-
times it might be included in a text and read as the tepe logogram, a cir-
cumstance that Prem in particular finds problematic, but that constitutes a
common practice in other writing systems; the fact that in some contexts
a sign might be used as a logogram and in other contexts as a semantic
determinative is well proven. Zender (2013, 2017) also recognizes the
existence of semantic determinatives and indicates that the system was
open to the inclusion of new determinatives to signal the presence of new
cultural elements introduced by the Spaniards in Mexico.
As I have already stated, in the Nahuatl writing system the reading
order of the signs seems to be emblematic, as it was not very strict. Al-
though it has a tendency to go from right to left, and bottom to top, this
order varies considerably (Velásquez García 2019, 78). This may have been
related to the fact that it was mainly used to write only proper names, top-
onyms, and dates (Lacadena García-Gallo 2008a, 8; Whittaker 2018b),
elements that could very well work in a heraldic or emblematic composition
(Velásquez García 2019, 78). This very fact might have caused problems
when reading information structured in lists of personal names or place
names, as the hieroglyphs of one name might mingle with those of the
adjacent hieroglyphic groups of another name. During the Colonial period,
many documents required the listing of names or places, such as population
censuses, tribute payment lists, and land ownership registers. These docu-
ments used Nahuatl hieroglyphic writing and were generally glossed by
official court translators. In order to avoid misinterpretation of the names,
Nahuatl writers, or tlacuilohqueh, used specific signs to indicate the limits
of each name, and these signs operate as semantic determinatives. In order
to show that this was a basic operating principle of the script, I include
some examples of its use in hieroglyphic compounds from different docu-
ments that use the Nahuatl hieroglyphic writing system (figure 7).

Figure 7. Examples of the use of the semantic determinatives in Nahuatl documents

(transcription included as it appears in the glosses). The semantic determinative for
MAN
- is shown using a horizontal arrow. Other determinatives (HOUSE-, WOMAN-, and
the red line connecting MAN- and WOMAN- with the meaning of KINSHIP-) are indicated
by vertical arrows. The line joining the name and its owner is marked with a thin
slanted arrow; it was optional, as could be seen in examples B, D, and E. A) Matrícula
de Huexotzinco f. 482v and 433v; B) Códice Vergara f. 2v and 3r; C) Códice Santa
María Asunción f. 2r; D) Libro de tributos de San Pablo Teocaltitlan f. 4r and 5r
(Mexicain 376 BNF); E) Fragmento de un proceso f. 1r (Mexicain 86 bnf)

All the examples shown in figure 7 are personal male names included
in lists for legal purposes. Each entry is signaled by means of a sign that
represents a male head in profile, and next to it, on the left or right, the
phonetic signs that record the proper name are located, sometimes linked
to the semantic determinative by a dark line. Significantly, Spanish gloss-
es are never used for the “male head” signs, only for the phonetic signs,
which may imply that they were not uttered. Support for this idea comes
from a similar source, but this time written in the Latin alphabet. These
lists of people were also written in Nahuatl, but using the Spaniards’ writ-
ing system, as can be appreciated in a document called the “Padrones de
Tlaxcala del siglo xvi y Padrón de nobles de Ocotelolco,” a census of the
Tlaxcala region created in 1557, in order to organize tribute and record
the activities of the men living in the towns included in it (Rojas Rabiela
1987) (figure 8).
This document includes a list of personal male names written in Na-
huatl that specifies the men living in different towns in the Tlaxcala re-
gion. As we can see, the header of the list indicates Cuauhcaltzinco tlaca,
“The men from Cuauhcaltzinco,” where Cuauhcaltzinco is the name of a
town, followed by the names of each of the males living in that place,
introduced by an early form of a bullet sign.14 The list does not need to
indicate that each name belongs to a different man, as is the case for Na-
huatl writing texts. The text organization directs the reader to the start
of the name, and it clearly indicates where it ends. The Latin alphabet
uses rows and space to separate different lexical components, so there is
no need to indicate the semantics for every single name. We can see a
classificatory indication at the beginning of the text, explaining that those
are the males from the town of Cuauhcaltzinco, and every name is clear-
ly identifiable from the other.
The origin of the determinative for male is the logogram tlaka, “man,”
which is also used with a phonetic value in this type of documents. We can
see this phonetic use in the document “Chalco, recibos presentados por el
14
Albert Davletshin (personal communication 2019) has pointed out the possibility
that this example might imply that male head symbols operate as a diacritic sign subtype,
which substitutes the bullet sign at the beginning of the name. This is not the case, since in
the previous examples the sign indicates the semantic category to which the personal names
apply and could be combined with other similar signs to modify their meaning (being mar-
ried, be the head of a household, etc.), implying that they operate as semantic determinatives.
The introductory sign for each line might be a form of the “calderon” character.

Figure 8. The image shows the list of names for the men living in the town of
Cuauhcaltzinco, included in the document named Padrones de Tlaxcala del siglo xvi
y Padrón de nobles de Ocotelolco. Source: Rojas Rabiela 1987

capitán Jorge Cerón y Carbajal”15 (figure 9). In this case, both logograms,
tlaka, “men,” and siwa, “women,” have a logogrammatic value as they are
complemented by another logogram, pan/sempowal, “flag/twenty,” to
indicate “twenty men” or “twenty women,” the amount of people that were
employed by Jorge Cerón y Carbajal.
One interesting thing about the nature of the Nahuatl semantic deter-
minatives is that they could be representations of the whole body of the
subject, not only their head (figure 10). In figure 10.A we have an example
of a lord being named using only his head wearing the Nahuatl crown, or
xiuwitzolli,16 but we also see another lord represented using a complete
image of his body, seated on a little bench-type throne, both recognizable
due to the presence of the glosses that state their names. In figure 10.B we
can see a representation of another crowned lord, Don Diego de San Fran-
cisco Tehuetzquititzin, seated on his throne, again designated by means of
the phonetic signs that compose his name (see Whittaker 2012, 143). With-
out the phonetic component of the composition, we would not be able to
recognize the person represented in the image, as Mesoamerican art in
general used stereotyped images to represent people, not portraits (Fuente
1970; Salazar Lama and Valencia Rivera 2017, 96).
In order to prove that these signs were not uttered in this kind of context,
I include here some examples of the use of the semantic determinative for
WOMAN
- (figure 11). The example in figure 11.A is the one that really proves
that Nahuatl semantic determinatives were not pronounced and only had a
classification role in this writing system. In this example, we have the same
sign, the head of a Nahuatl woman, working as the semantic determinative
WOMAN
- (marked with a vertical arrow) and as a logogram (marked with the
inclined arrow), one with the reading value of SIWA, siwā[tl], “woman”
(Molina 2013 [1571], 22), and the other one providing the meaning siwātl,
“woman”. Both signs were included because each one serves a different
function in the text, the one to the left indicates that the following text is
related to a woman, in this case indicating the female’s personal name;
and the second has a logogrammatic function, indicating that the per-
sonal name of that woman includes the sounds corresponding to the word
15
This document, currently held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France Library (bnf
Doc. 30), was presented in 1564 as part of a process against Jorge Cerón for misappropriation
of tribute, by the people of Chalco, where he acted as governor.
16
The xiuhuitzolli, “corona real con piedras preciosas” (Molina 2013 [1571], 30), was
the most prestigious insignia in the Nahua world (Olko 2014, 37)

Figure 9. Images coming from the document Chalco, recibos presentados

por el capitán Jorge Cerón y Carbajal, where the logograms tlaka and siwa have a
logogrammatic value. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, París
Figure 10. A) Images from the document Calpan, Confirmación de las elecciones
(bnf Doc. 73); B) Don Diego de San Francisco Tehuetzquititzin, ca. 1564
(agn, Tierras, vol. 55, exp. 5, f. 387r)

Figure 11. A) Matrícula de Huexotzinco f. 492r; B) Matrícula de Huexotzinco

f. 490v; C) Códice Vergara f. 5r. The vertical arrow indicates a semantic
determinative, a sign that was not uttered; the inclined arrow indicates
a phonetic sign, a sign that was uttered
siwa as part of it. The gloss in the Latin alphabet proves the latter point, as
it gives us the rest of the information necessary to complete the name of the
woman, which is, according to the gloss, “Maria Tepalcihuatl,” where the
Christian name of the woman, María, was omitted and the sound “tepal,”
elided. In figure 11.B we can again see the same sign, being used with a
logogrammatic function in the personal name of an elderly male person,
“Pablo Cihuacoatl.” Finally, in figure 11.C we can see the same sign being
used again both as a semantic determinative and as a logogram, to indicate
that the male whose name is provided by the phonetic signs to the left of
the male head determinative includes the word siwa in it, as his name is
“Pedro Tecihuauh.” The second sign represents the WOMAN- semantic deter-
minative, which along with the red line that links it to the MAN- semantic
determinative, is used to indicate that he is married.17
There are many examples of semantic determinatives present in colo-
nial documents that still used the Nahuatl writing system. Some examples
17
Regarding the lines employed by the Nahua scribes to join different signs, some au-
thors consider them as auxiliary signs (Houston and Zender 2018; Davletshin and Lacadena
García-Gallo 2019). Davletshin and Lacadena García-Gallo propose the use of the sign = to
indicate it in the transliteration of Nahua texts (Davletshin and Lacadena García-Gallo 2019,
207; Velásquez García 2019, 72). From my own point of view, regarding the case of the red
lines that tie two spouses, they work in the same way semantic determinatives do, as they
are not uttered and, instead, they provide semantic information that helps to determine the
relationship of the terms they unite (see figure 7).

Figure 12. A) MAN- determinative with the face of a man (Matrícula de Huexotzingo
f. 490r); B) OLD MAN- determinative with the face of a wrinkled man (Matrícula de
Huexotzingo f. 490r); C) DEAD MAN- determinative with the shadowed face of a man
(Matrícula de Huexotzingo f. 492v); D) WIDOWER- determinative with the face of a
man with tears (Matrícula de Huexotzingo f. 608r); E) WOMAN- determinative with
the face of a woman (Matrícula de Huexotzingo f. 492r); F) OLD WOMAN- determinative
with the face of a wrinkled woman (Matrícula de Huexotzingo f. 532r); G) DEAD
WOMAN
- determinative with the shadowed face of a woman (Códice Vergara f. 6r); H)
WIDOW
- determinative with the face of a woman with tears (Matrícula de Huexotzingo
f. 608r); I) BOY- determinative with the face of a boy (Códice de Santa María Asun-
ción f. 6r); J) GIRL- determinative with girl wearing a blouse (Códice de Santa María
Asunción f. 6r); K) BABY BOY- determinative with a baby’s cradle (Códice Vergara
f. 2v); L) BABY GIRL (DEAD)- determinative with a baby’s cradle with a little blouse on top
and shadowed (Códice Vergara f. 2v); M) NOBLE MAN- determinative with the face of a
man wearing a xiuhuitzolli (Calpan, Confirmación de las elecciones, bnf Doc. 73); N)
BLIND MAN
- determinative with the face of a man with the eyes crossed out (Matrícula
de Huexotzingo f. 546v); O) HOUSEHOLD- determinative with a house and the name of
the family inside (Matrícula de Huexotzingo f. 485v); P) DEFEATED TOWN- determinative
with thatched roofed house in flames (Códice Mendoza f. 2v)

are included in figure 12. This is not an extensive list, but it includes a
number of the most common examples. As we can see on the list, the main
use of these determinatives is the categorization of gender, as applied to
personal naming, with the exceptions of the house that designates a house-
hold or family, and the defeated town that is represented by a house on fire
associated with a toponym. If we attend to the mechanisms used to dif-
ferentiate one determinative from the other, they employ a stereotyped
image of how a category must be represented. In the case of the determina-
tives for man (figure 12.A) and woman (figure 12.E), what characterizes
them are their haircuts, particularly that of the woman, as the two knots
on top are shared by the determinatives associated with adult women (fig-
ure 12.E–H). Wrinkles are the main characteristic of aged people (figure
12.B, F) and tears represent a mourning person, which is the way widows
and widowers are pictured (figure 12.D, H). Regarding dead people (figure
12.C, G), they are represented using the same determinatives for adults,
but their faces have been grayed out, and sometimes their eyes shut, to
signal the lack of life in them. This is applied to the children’s determina-
tives too, which may take this determinative to indicate a deceased sibling
(figure 12.L). Also regarding children, girls are distinguished by the display
of a huipil, an embroidered blouse only worn by women (figure 12.J, L).
Blind men are represented with lines crossing their eyes18 (figure 12.N),
as if wearing a band, to show their inability to see. Noblemen are shown
wearing the xiuwitzolli to show their high status (figure 12.M).
An example of the use of these determinatives outside the contexts of
the list of names, can be appreciated in a document that employs them to
describe the characteristics of a property (figure 13), on a house plan an-
nexed to a land litigation document, to indicate the measures of the house
under dispute, using Nahuatl writing signs to show the size of the house and
the names of its owners (Valencia Rivera 2018). The document is part
of the case of Ana Tepi, against Antón Ximénez, for the possession of the
house depicted on the plan, which she claims she inherited from her de-
ceased husband, Diego Pantecatl. As we can see in the image, the diagram
of the house and its dimensions are shown, using hands (maitl) and hearts
18
We know that these are blind men as the text in Spanish that explains these images
in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco says ciegos, “blind.” This same convention of crossing the
eyes with a line is used in other documents to signal foreigners, which indicates that in some
cases these signs had a regional variation of use (I would like to thank Margarita Cossich for
pointing this out).

Figure 13. Property plan of Ana Tepi, bequeathed by Diego Pantecatl, ca. 1567.
Source: agn, Tierras, vol. 20, expediente 3, f. 11v
(yolotl), and in the middle of the larger room, there is a Nahuatl text that
includes the names of both, Ana Tepi and Diego Pantecatl. Each name has
a semantic determinative, WOMAN- for Ana Tepi, and DEAD MAN- for Diego
Pantecatl. To the right of each determinative, the phonetic signs that spell
their names are located. For Ana, a hand holding water is written, which
together spell a, for the water sign, and ANA, for the logogram “to hold, or
take” (Molina 2013 [1571], f. 5v). In the case of Diego Pantecatl, the sign
PAN, “flag,” indicates his name, and close to his mouth, there is another
determinative represented by a darkened speech scroll, which indicates
Diego’s will after his death. Both names are connected by a rope, which
substitutes for the red line present in other documents19 that designates a
married couple (see figures 7.B, C, and 11.C).
With the decline of the use of the Nahuatl writing system, in favor of
the use of the Latin alphabet, both systems started to intermix, and the
glosses in Spanish began to substitute the phonetic signs in the names (See
figure 10.A). This also implied that some elements from the Colonial culture
started to be incorporated in the writing system (Zender 2013; Batalla
Rosado 2018; Bueno Bravo 2018), and that is the reason why we could spot
19
See note 17.

a tiny Christian cross attached to the MARRIAGE- determinative—being in this

case a rope not a red line—in order to overload the symbol with a new mean-
ing, that of the Christian marriage present in the new cultural world created
in Mexico after the conquest. But this change did not mean the extinction
of the Nahuatl writing system, which survived for many more years.
Conclusions
Traditionally, the signs analyzed in this study have been considered by some
researchers as mere illustrations, due to their pictorial character, as they are
often included inside or near the images that sometimes illustrate Nahuatl
texts (Navarrete 2011; Boone 1994, 2011). Sign iconicity in Mesoamerican
writing systems has also fueled the idea that writing signs were language
independent, that they served to convey meaning regardless of the langua-
ge used by the reader (Boone 1994, 9; 2011, 197–98; Grube and Arellano
Hoffmann 2002, 33; Martin 2006, 63), but this is certainly not the case, as
representation is culturally biased, and what might seem as a straightforward
reading for a sign, might be misleading. Take for example the way Maya
scribes represented the word for lord, using a vulture head as a logogram
for the word AJAW (see figure 5, third line from top to bottom, right co-
lumn) or the example taken from the Memorial de los indios de Tepetlaoztoc
(figure 14), where part of the tribute paid by Tlilpotonqui, lord of Tepetla
oztoc, to the encomendero Miguel Díaz de Aux is shown (Valle 1994, 61).
In Figure 14, the images below each one of the two white bundles, or
cargas, indicate their contents, but they do not illustrate them, which might
lead to some erroneous interpretations (Valle 1994, 217), but they use writ-
ing to describe them instead. In this way we know that the first bundle con-
tains beans, written in Nahuatl as e-etl, etl (Lacadena and Wichmann 2011,
29), as the gloss in Spanish indicate—frijoles, beans—but the second one
instead of containing what indicates the gloss—harina, flour—contains maize
grains, written in Nahuatl as tla-tlaol, tlaol (Lacadena and Wichmann 2011,
24). This implies that these images are not iconic but writing signs instead,
and that they were supposed to be read in a language where the phonetic
complementation, e- in the first word and tla- in the second, makes sense.
As the evidence provided in this article has tried to prove, there is
a group of signs that were used in the Nahuatl writing system as seman-
tic determinatives, a mechanism used by the scribes to aid the readers to

Figure 14. Page 12, figure B from the Memorial de los indios
de Tepetlaozctoc. Source: Valle 1994, f. 12, lámina B
better comprehend some texts, especially those organized as lists of simi-

lar elements. Due to the variable reading order of Nahuatl texts, some aid
must have been provided by the writer using this writing system to allow
the reader to discern where a text unit begins and where it ends, espe-
cially when many similar items are included in the same text. We should
remember that this was also one of the goals pursued by the Egyptians,
when using this scriptural aid. Semantic determinatives are fairly similar
to noun and verb classifiers and they tend to complement each other. This
means that languages that have classifiers tend not to use determinatives,
and languages that do not have classifiers depend on determinatives for
this classification function. It is important to notice though, that classifiers
are associated with language, and semantic determinatives with the writing
system, so both basically perform the same function but on two different
realization levels, which is why determinatives are not uttered, and classi-
fiers are required and pronounced when they are present in the language.
In many writing systems, semantic determinatives originated as logograms
that acquire this new special function, and even though they might mainly
be used as determinatives, this does not prevent their use as logograms in
other contexts. Semantic determinatives may combine to enrich their
meaning, or to create new determinatives. All in all, this proves that the
Nahuatl writing system shared the same scriptural resources employed by

the vast majority of the writing systems of the world, and contrary to some
researcher’s opinions (Prem 2008, 38), it was a full-fledged writing system.
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Sobre el autor
Rogelio Valencia Rivera es maestro en Ciencias por la Universidad Politéc-

nica de Madrid y doctor en Historia con especialidad en Antropología Ame-
ricana por la Facultad de Geografía e Historia de la Universidad Complu-
tense de Madrid. Forma parte del Proyecto Arqueológico Calakmul desde
2008. Está especializado en epigrafía, iconografía, historia y religión mayas
y mesoamericanas, con énfasis en el análisis de la relación entre texto e
imagen en las representaciones plásticas prehispánicas.

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Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol.

61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48

The Use of Semantic Determinatives

El uso de determinativos semánticos

Rogelio VALENCIA RIVERA

Recepción: 12 de mayo de 2020 | Aceptación: 23 de noviembre de 2020

Palabras clave: Determinativos semánticos, clasificadores de sustantivos, lexicalización pictóri-

As the latest research on the Nahuatl1 writing system has demonstrated

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

is the presence of so-called “semantic determinatives,” defined as graphic

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Use of Semantic Determinatives in Egyptian Writing

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Figure 1. Some examples of semantic determinatives.

Figure 1 presents some examples of signs employed as semantic deter-

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

figuratifs, qui constituent le nom lui-même ; 2° D’un caractère déterminatif du

In figure 2, two examples of personal names are shown, a male name,

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Figure 2. Examples of the use of semantic determinatives in ancient

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Use of Semantic Determinatives in Sumerian Writing

Another ancient writing system that employed semantic determinatives

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Figure 3. Examples of the use of semantic determinatives in ancient

Use of Semantic Determinatives in Chinese Writing

Semantic determinatives are a very important part of the Chinese writing

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

character could be also joined with another semantic determinative to

Noun Classification Systems and Semantic Determinatives

I have previously indicated that semantic determinatives operate as classi-

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Use of Semantic Determinatives in Maya Writing

The presence of semantic determinatives in the Maya writing system has

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Figure 4. The fire sign employed as a semantic determinative.

Figure 5. Examples of “representative logograms” or “pictorial lexicalizations.”

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Use of Semantic Determinatives in Nahuatl Writing

Nahuatl was another Mesoamerican language that employed classifiers to

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Suffix Used for

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

either directly, by mentioning its presence in the script (Manrique Casta-

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Figure 7. Examples of the use of the semantic determinatives in Nahuatl documents

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Figure 9. Images coming from the document Chalco, recibos presentados

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Figure 11. A) Matrícula de Huexotzinco f. 492r; B) Matrícula de Huexotzinco

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

a tiny Christian cross attached to the MARRIAGE- determinative—being in this

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

better comprehend some texts, especially those organized as lists of simi-

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl vol. 61 (enero-junio 2021): 13-48 | issn 0071-1675

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2000. Classifiers: A Typology of Noun Categorization De-